Another fight with my wife. Another misunderstanding. Another amalgamation of all the stressors of the week--financial, physical, and emotional--piling up and exploding in a strange, toxic tennis match of passive-agressive jabs, uncommunicated hurts, and misplaced and misinformed allegations and assumptions.

The worst part is that my son bears witness to it all. That is the really painful part. Sometimes I feel like a lost sailor with no tools for navigation, under a starless sky. How can I make it so that he doesn't grow up like me? How can I make it so that he is not lonely?

At the end of the day, the fault is on both ends. I get irritable and tired, and am a poor listener. My wife doesn't know how to communicate, and bottles up her feelings, using passive aggressive attacks to express her feelings. Then we explode.

My son can feel the energy before it manifests, and gets hyperactive, almost as if to distract everyone from the impending bomb.

We finally make some semblance of peace before they go out to a nearby event here in town. My stomach hurts. It turns out I had broached a topic that brought up painful memories in my wife. I was unaware. All I was aware of were the passive aggressive attacks and my own mounting annoyance. We feed off of each other.

I make my way to the convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes and a drink.

I hate smoking, but at times like these it brings me back to bottom in a way and clears my head. My wife had said some hurtful words to my child in the course of the fight after I had provoked her. Her anger toward me ended up coming to rest partially on him. I had brought him into it. I had chided her for raising her voice in front of him. Now he knew he was involved. This is not fair to him as a four-year-old child.

As I smoke my cigarette in the cold outside of the Lawson I think about my end of things. I had been stressed, annoyed, and feeling empty and unhappy inside of myself. If I don't have any happiness, or a solid, secure center, how can provide that for my son? No answer from the sky. No answer from any "god." Maybe you don't want to believe in god, so that is why he doesn't answer you. Useless thoughts like this swirl around in my head for a few seconds.

It's not that I don't believe in anything, it's just there's no way to put it into words. After I finish my Kool and begin to walk down the street toward home the answer I suspect is right returns: If you don't have it, you can't give it. You're mad at your wife because you're mad at yourself. Sure she's not perfect, but someone else would react totally different to her. The reason you react in fear and anger, is something inside of YOU.

I think of what I have done to help trigger the fight. My complaining. My veiled guilt trips. I'm sorry.

I want something so much better for my son. For my wife. For me. The root of my pain is unhappiness inside of me. If I am at peace, a million armies could assail me and I'd be fine. I still have too many doubts. About my self-worth. About God. About what really is. About my idols burning and falling down in flames every day. Idols such as preachers, teachers, philosophers, friends, and images of gods I had held up so high as distant bastions of security. There is no distance tonight. Just now. This cold, unforgivable moment.

Follow reality. This phrase rings true to me. About as true as a phrase can ring as far as words go.

My family's times together are not all bad. We have had many joyful moments. I want to make more. My wife has work to do, too, but for me, the only person I must really be concerned with is myself. My reactions, my words, my curses and screaming tell it all: something is wrong.

Awareness is funny because it doesn't involve judgement, just knowledge. It sees. Once you see something, change is inevitable. Seeing is change. Real knowledge is automatically action. There is no difference. So why am I so frustrated inside so often?

The more I put on the glasses of awareness, which have no god, no bias, no prejudice, no master, no creed, it all opens up to me. My happiness. Our happiness. Everybody's happiness is buried underneath mounds and mounds of programs, both cultural and religious, psychological and physical, and it is really quite simple, after all:

Children understand how to live and be happy without knowing they understand. They do it naturally. The crown of adulthood and the mark of enlightenment is having this childlike spirit, with the serpentine wisdom of adulthood to guide it and keep it from danger. What power. But, also, what a curse if not realized.

My wife and son are home now. It seems like things are okay. Apologies have been made where they were needed. My wife is asking me to talk now, so I need to try to put some of this stuff into practice. Thanks for reading.

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Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata, Japan.